Tag: teaching

Hanoi Journals

I slide off my high heels, adding them to the large pile of shoes at the front of a brightly colored kindergarten building in Hanoi, Vietnam. Looking down the hallway I notice dozens of irregular snowflakes each cut with kid scissors and hung with a teacher’s care. I feel at home.

While I have never been to Vietnam before, much less this specific school, my global travels have shown me that there is a shared humanity that runs across our school hallways. Whether I am at a Catholic school in Brazil, a private school in Vietnam, or a public school in the United States, there are several things I know to be true. These things transcend language, culture, and worldview. In fact, they may be the magic that makes schools work.

Connection matters

It only takes one spark of laughter to change the whole tenor of a classroom.

Learning a new game can bring people together.

Though we show it in different ways, we all need to connect.

It is absolutely possible to sit with someone who speaks a different language than you and have a conversation.

Friends can share a joke without saying a word.

There is a renewed sense of possibility each morning when we greet students and colleagues.

Few gifts are more treasured in a school day than receiving art from a student or a hot cup of coffee from a teacher.

Kids are Kids

Young children need to dance and sing.

Middle school students are curious about everything.

You can see both the lasting glimmers of childhood and the new glimmers of adulthood flash across the faces of high school students at play or work.

Kids carry big worries and big ideas and they don’t always know how to express those.

Universal Language

We straighten our gaze with determined focus when solving an interesting problem.

When we see something beautiful, we want to share it.

We nod when we say thank you.

We crinkle our eyes to show delight.

There is a telltale kind of tired that teachers everywhere wear on their faces at the end of a school day.

I am grateful to Wellspring International Bilingual School for inviting us to spend the week with students and teachers. While I did manage to learn a few phrases in Vietnamese (thank you mostly to a group of sixth grade students), more importantly I learned that it doesn’t take spoken language to say many of the things that matter most in school including: thank you, I see you, I value you, and I’m happy you’re here.

Lessons from our early-elementary classrooms

I recently spent a morning working with and learning from first, second, and third graders at my daughter’s elementary school. As a high school and middle school principal, it’s been awhile since I’ve asked someone to sit criss cross applesauce or posed a question and watched as every hand in the room shot up. There’s nothing quite like that enthusiasm.

I also believe that young children are wired for inclusion. Throughout my career in education, I have been constantly inspired by the ways young children are quick to make friends with peers who are different from them.

This doesn’t mean they don’t see differences, it just means that these differences seldom impact who they choose to color with, kick the ball with, or build a huge tower out of multicolored blocks with. It also doesn’t impact who they choose to give a hug to or receive a hug from.

I have been thinking a lot about inclusion, elementary education, and the lessons we
can learn from neurodiverse student populations. My first teaching position was in an
early elementary classroom for students with disabilities. This position taught me
everything I know about teaching. When we launched our program, I was teaching in
what is called a “self-contained” classroom. The idea was that all of my students’
learning would “be contained” inside this classroom.

I had other ideas.

Learning should never be contained to the four walls of a classroom. I also didn’t want
our class to be isolated from the broader school community. Therefore, I sought out
every opportunity possible to make sure my students were included with their peers in
the general education first-grade program and that those first graders were reciprocallyincluded in our classroom.

Thanks to some critical colleagues who partnered with me on this endeavor, we
adopted new collaborative approaches to managing our class rosters. We said yes to
huge integrated projects like painting a mural or recording a CD together, and we took
numerous field trips to learn outside of the classroom. These experiences made us
better educators, and with hope, they made us better human beings too.

Do you want to learn more about inclusion? Spend time with a diverse group of young
children, preferably during free play or art.

Will young children ask questions about why their friends are different? Of course.
They ask questions about everything. Maybe they haven’t yet had a friend with
physical disabilities or a friend who uses assistive technology. However, their curiosity
is usually satiated with a simple, straightforward answer. This helps me talk; these help
me walk; this helps my weaker eye grow stronger. A few words saying this is who I am
and what I need is usually all it takes for children to get back to the important business
of playing, learning, and making friends.